95% Of Income Gains Since 2009 Went To The Top 1%

According to Berkeley economics professor Emmanuel Saez, 95% of income gains since 2009 have accrued to the top 1%.

The last eight years’ recovery has been terrible for the bottom 99%, whose incomes are barely rising at all: just 0.1% per year in real terms.

The figures below show that, since the late 1980s, about 80 percent of the value of the market has been held by the top 10 percent. Within that top 10 percent, the share of stock wealth held by the top 1 percent is about equal to the share held by the 90-99th percentiles; both groups’ shares are twice as large as the share that the entire bottom 90 percent holds.

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For blacks the situation is especially bad. The median net worth (income + assets including homeownership – debt) of white households was about $117,000 in 2013. For African American households, the comparable figure is just under $2,000. In other words, black net worth is less than 2 percent that of white net worth.